Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people for the purpose of influencing, managing, directing, or protecting them. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras, or hearing from a distance by means of microphones with high sensitivity. Monitoring and recording such observations/hearings is very useful to governments and law enforcement to maintain social control, recognize and monitor threats, and prevent/investigate criminal activity. Mobile video/audio surveillance systems, which are mounted on vehicles that travel by air, such as flying drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and like aircraft, or on vehicles that travel on land, such as cars, vans, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, robots, and the like, or on vehicles that travel by water, such as boats and like watercraft, or on body harnesses worn by human personnel, enable governments to possess an unprecedented ability to monitor and record surveillance information.
However, many civil rights and privacy groups have long expressed the concern that by allowing continual increases in governmental surveillance of its citizens, a mass surveillance society, with extremely limited, or non-existent, political and/or personal freedoms, will result. As the ever-increasing utility of such mobile video/audio surveillance systems has evolved and resulted in more frequent arrests by law enforcement, the use of such surveillance systems has been challenged as an infringement of an individual's constitutional right of privacy. Although legal safeguards for conducting a surveillance operation have been proposed, they are often interpreted differently in different jurisdictions. The last thing a law enforcement agency wants to do is to invest significant man-hours and resources into an investigation and conviction, and then to have the case overturned on appeal in court for failure to observe the legal safeguards as interpreted by that jurisdiction.
Accordingly, there is a need to assist governmental agencies in conducting video/audio surveillance in a legal, constitutionally-approved manner by insuring that the mobile video/audio surveillance systems cannot be operated in an illegal manner.
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The method and system components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.